


Tearing Apart, My Blue-Blue Heart

by isaac richard (isaacrichard)



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Introspection, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Pre-Canon, RARE FUCKIN PAIR OR WHAT, Recreational Drug Use, Season/Series 01, for obvious reasons, its just weed calm down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:35:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25052500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isaacrichard/pseuds/isaac%20richard
Summary: Mr. Robot doesn't have the time to like anyone - there are more important things to do than find somebody to fall in bed with, in his mind.You know. For the most part.
Relationships: Mr. Robot/Romero
Kudos: 9





	Tearing Apart, My Blue-Blue Heart

**Author's Note:**

> what the fuck is this? don't ask me. I just wanted to write robot and this is where we ended up
> 
> title: red red wine by UB40

He had never –

And it’s an embarrassing thing to admit, Mr. Robot muses, for some reason. That to not have participated in sexual intercourse within your lifespan is considered shameful. Humans had such a strange sense of priority.

He says “himself” because Elliot had had – _enough_ partners. The regular amount, he guesses.

It was probably the most normal thing about him, that he was mostly a monogamist who didn’t dig casual sex. Which was fine. As long as there was no girlfriend (and Robot laughs at that, knowing what Elliot _really_ wants) at that moment, Robot didn’t concern himself with where Elliot stuck his dick.

For most of Robot’s existence, it hadn’t been an issue. He didn’t have the time, and when he occasionally did, he just didn’t care. People were mean, stupid, evil, selfish. He didn’t need to get intimate with them and have all their bullshit spill into his, into Elliot’s. There were more important things to be doing.

But then.

Because nothing ever stays simple, easy, in their life – his or Elliot’s. Because they seemingly had a crazy magnet stuck permanently to their head, and whenever things were calm, they never stayed that way.

But then, Fsociety begins, and it’s a bad time to be feeling anything that isn’t hatred for Evil Corp. Setting up the arcade with Romero and Trenton – and Darlene, off site, working on electricity – Mr. Robot feels a deep sense of peace. Things were getting done. They were going to change the world once they got the terminals online.

“You want a joint?” Romero drawls, easily. Trenton had stepped away – and she was too young to be smoking, anyway.

Romero wipes the sweat from his brow with an old handkerchief, sticks it back into his breast pocket. His smile is lazy, simple. He had outrun his daemons decades ago.

“Grew it myself, man. Dankest shit this side of the Mississippi.”

Mr. Robot had not – in fact, his most annoying daemon stirs, as he momentarily loses concentration, tracing the crinkles in the corners of Romero’s eyes. But being near someone with such a quiet mind, someone who didn’t struggle every damned day of their life – it’s intoxicating, and he wants more.

It takes him almost twenty full seconds to respond, but his answer is still stupid. “Sure, okay. Breaktime.” 

The weed is a bad idea – which Robot realizes about four hits in, watching the cars race past on the road outside of the arcade. The sun had dipped into the clouds, and it finally felt like mid-spring, instead of hell.

“Fuck,” he says, joint between his teeth. He lights it, hits it, and hands it back to Romero. “I’m stoned.”

“I don’t get you,” Romero says, as he accepts. “Wasn’t gettin’ stoned the whole point?”

Mr. Robot laughs. “Shit. I guess it was.”

Romero smokes in silence, for a long minute. He was older – older than Robot – but “black don’t crack” seemed to be his case. Robot could not get a clear read on his age, no matter how hard he squinted at the wrinkles around his eyes, trying to count them like you would the rings in a tree stump.

“How old are you?” he asks, and he’s aware it’s a very suspicious question. He may have had a better way to receive this information, had he not been high.

He knew Elliot did this, and had done it a lot as a teenager, and that he should have some kind of tolerance from the body. But he seemingly hadn’t retained anything but the body’s automatic smooth inhale, from years of cigarette abuse.

Which, of course, only stands to make him more stoned.

Romero laughs, takes the joint Robot doesn’t remember grabbing. “Too old for this shit.”

Mr. Robot groans, inwardly. He should have expected that kind of answer. “Fuck – just tell me. I won’t insult you too much about it, promise.”

Romero gives him a strange, startled look, which Robot chalks up to the fact that Elliot had never, not once, asked about his personal life, or offered up any of his own. Which wasn’t exclusive to Romero – the only person Robot (or Elliot, though he didn’t yet know that) truly knew was Darlene. That was by design, and would make it harder to snitch, should things go south.

But – human connection, need for companionship, and all that. That’s what Mr. Robot understands it as, in his hazy weed brain.

“Sixty-three,” Romero says, and he snorts. His dark eyes twinkle. “I can’t believe I made it that long. I shoulda been dead twenty years ago, tell you the truth.”

“It’s rough out there,” Robot agrees, and tries to light the roach without inhaling the flame. Romero snatches it from him, tutting.

“Burn your fuckin’ lips that way,” he mutters, and procures a pair of tweezers, instead. They finish the joint pinched between its tiny metal arms.

“What the fuck are you, a Girl Scout?” Mr. Robot mutters. “ _’Be prepared’_?”

“Better than doing whatever it is you do,” Romero says, unhurt. Robot supposes that that’s fair.

“Just tell me one thing, Elliot,” Romero says. “Fuck are we doing here, man? I _still_ don’t know shit, other than E Corp stole my mom’s whole life, and I want them gone.”

“That’s really all you need to know,” Mr. Robot mutters, softly, and he curses Elliot’s height for making him stand on tiptoe for the kiss, brushing his lips against Romero’s. They both taste like pot.

“What the fuck,” Romero says, still against his mouth, and for a single second, Robot thinks he majorly fucked up. Romero is about to kill them for this – and before they’ve even gotten any work done.

“You’re too young,” Romero whispers, but he hasn’t moved, or made any motion close to murder. “I’ll catch a fuckin’ case for this. Are you even legal?”

Mr. Robot laughs, because he knows Elliot doesn’t look under eighteen. Not anymore, with his dark circles and yellow nails. “Yeah,” he says, and Romero shakes his head, like he’s given in.

“Fuck it, I guess,” he says, whispering, and deepens the kiss.

And when Romero dies, shot by accident in the worst kind of ending, Mr. Robot attends the funeral. Elliot has no idea as to why.


End file.
